The Threat of the Globalization of Agriculture

By Vandana Shiva, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), [26 August
1997]

The media are beginning to announce President Clinton's campaign to be
give "fast-track" authority by the Congress in relation to the proposed
expansion of the NAFTA agreement to include CHILE ( ie to declare Chile
to be part of the Northern hemisphere ?). Fast-track requires the
congress to give simple Yes-No to the executive proposals, with no
discussion of ramifications, philosophy or the sucking sound as jobs are
exported from the US.

This piece, written by Vandana Shiva seems to be about six months old - but
it contains the kind of information your congresspersons should have
knowledge of.

Dr Vandana Shiva is Director of the Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi, and winner of the
Right Livelihood Award (the alternative Nobel Prize) in 1993. She is also
the Indian representative of the Third World Network.

Michael P

The material that follows has been provided by VSO (Voluntary Service
Overseas)

THE THREAT OF AGRICULTURE

VANDANA SHIVA looks at the impact of global agriculture in terms of food
security and farmers' rights, and offers an alternative model of
liberalisation for producers and consumers alike and asks why in a world
where globalisation and liberalisation are the dominant forces of the
day, the greatest threat to farmers is agriculture itself.

Trade liberalisation and the globalisation of agriculture is supposed to
increase the production of food and improve the economic situation of
farmers across the world. However, in country after country the process
is leading to a decline in food production and productivity, a decline in
conditions for farmers and a decline in food security for consumers.
Globalisation is deepening food insecurity the world over.

The globalisation of agriculture is in fact merely the corporatisation of
agriculture. According to Kristin Dawkins, Director of the Research
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy of the United States, the US
government has led the world in promoting globalised monopolies through
international trade agreements, assisted by such bullying tactics as the
unilateral leveraging of its vast markets. Under encouragement from the
US government, says Dawkins, the food corporations controlling US
agriculture are now attempting to control world agriculture.

This corporatisation of agriculture, which is being pushed as a successor
to the Green Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, is leading to new poverty
for small farmers, as unequal and unfair contracts lock them into a new
form of bondage. Farmers in the Indian state of Punjab contracted by
Pepsico to grow tomatoes received only 0.75 rupees per kilo, while the
market price was 2.00 rupees. First the farmers rejected Pepsico and now
Pepsico has abandoned Punjab, selling its tomato processing plant to a
subsidiary of Levers.

SERVING WHOSE INTERESTS?

The liberalisation of agriculture can be either external liberalisation
or internal liberalisation. External liberalisation is driven by foreign
trade and foreign investment; it serves external interests. Agricultural
liberalisation under the IMF's structural adjustment programmes is an
example of such external liberalisation. It includes liberalising
fertiliser imports and deregulating the domestic manufacture and
distribution of fertilisers; the removal of subsidies on irrigation,
electricity and credit; the deregulation of the wheat, rice, sugar cane,
cotton and oilseed industries; and the dismantling of the food security
system. These elements are recipes for concentrating control over
agriculture in the hands of transnational agribusiness corporations such
as Cargill and Pepsico. Internal liberalisation liberates agriculture for
ecological sustainability and social justice. It includes freeing
agriculture from high external inputs such as chemical fertilisers and
pesticides, making a transition instead to sustainable agriculture based
on internal inputs for ecological sustainability. It means freeing
farmers from debt and the fear of dispossession, whether of land, water
or biodiversity. It means freeing peasants from landlessness, freeing
rural people from water scarcity by ensuring inalienable and equitable
water rights, freeing the poor from the spectre of starvation, and
rebuilding local markets and local food security.

Photo: Pouring rice,
Savaar, Bangladesh ) David Constantine/Panos

The globalisation of agriculture is violating all these components of
food-related human rights. The rights of small producers to land, water
and biodiversity are being violated by undoing land reform, by the
privatisation of water and the monopolisation of seed and plant
resources. The ecological rights of all people are being violated by the
spread of ecologically destructive industrial and factory farming
methods. Small producers' right to work is being violated by the
destruction of their livelihoods. The right to cultural diversity is
being violated by the spread of the unsafe, unhealthy 'McDonald's, Coke
and Pepsi' culture.

THE CASE OF MEXICO

According to Victor Suares Carrera of Mexico's National Association of
Peasant Maize Producers, it has taken only 14 years of liberalisation and
two years of NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Association) to wipe
out 9,000 years of food security in Mexico. Three years ago Mexico
imported half a million tonnes of rice; it now imports seven million.
While the corn economy is being destroyed, Mexico is importing yellow
corn from the USA, which is used to feed animals in that country. The
government has amended the Mexican land law and discarded the principles
of the 1910 revolution, at the demand of agribusiness.

The rebellion of Zapatista peasant farmers in Chiapas on 1 January 1994
(the first day of NAFTA) decried this policy of impoverishment of farmers
and the denial of their rights. Thousands demanded change in the National
Agricultural Policy and support for domestic producers. They argued that
it is much easier to support domestic production that to buy from the US,
especially when Mexico has no foreign currency.

In 1992 Mexico imported 20 per cent of its food. In 1996 it is importing
43 per cent. Eating 'more cheaply' on imports means not eating at all for
the poor in Mexico. One out of every two peasants is not getting enough
to eat, and in the two years since the introduction of NAFTA the intake
of food has been destroyed by 30 per cent.

PROFITS FIRST

Everywhere across the world less food is being produced and less diverse
food is being grown, and less is reaching the poor and hungry. Fewer
farmers are finding a place in agriculture, and even privileged consumers
have no food security in the sense of access to safe and nutritious food.
BSE-infected meat and hazardous chemicals are creating new health threats
for consumers even in affluent countries.

The centralised and chemical-intensive production and distribution system
linked with the Green Revolution model has proved itself to be
undemocratic, wasteful and non-sustainable. The globalisation of
corporate agriculture is aggravating all the problems linked with the
centralised system of food production and distribution. It is increasing
chemical use, through conventional methods as well as genetic
engineering. It is increasing transport and 'food miles', and fuelling
food insecurity through climate change. It is promoting the mining of
water and soil fertility by putting profitability above sustainability.
It is giving primacy to trade and undermining domestic production.

DEMOCRATISING THE SYSTEM

The imperative now is to shift to a democratic food system based on
sustainable production, conservation and equitable access to resources.
These ecological and democratic alternatives are already in place
throughout the world. What the world needs now is a 'globalisation' of
these initiatives towards small farmer-centred agricultural systems
guided by the objectives of food self-sufficiency and ecological
sustainability.

Democratising the food system implies the localisation rather than
globalisation of agriculture. On the one hand, localisation involves a
shift from external inputs to internal inputs; on the other, it involves
rebuilding local food security as the basis of national food security.
Democratising the food system also involves a shift from monocultures to
diversity. It involves a shift from the obsession with dollars per acre
to a concern for nutrition per acre.

Democratising the food system involves the democratic right of consumers
to know what they eat. This includes the right to labelling of
genetically engineered foods and chemically processed foods.
Democratising the food system needs to be based on internal
liberalisation rather than external liberalisation.

Democratising the food system involves putting people and nature, not
trade, at the centre of food and agricultural policy.